I write 'Scot Goes Pop!', one of Scotland's three most-read political blogs. Member of the SNP's Policy Development Committee. Email: icehouse.250@gmail.com
Scotland
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Disaster for Burnham as Labour languish in JOINT THIRD in YouGov Scottish subsample -
scotgoespop.blogspot.com/202โฆ
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Beth Rigby is the first journalist to get the tone right. Peston and Kuenssberg made it far too easy for him.
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Please, Scotland fans, if you meant it about rising and being a nation again, vote for a pro-independence party when you get home and let's do it for real. We can still get something right this summer.
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The BBC News channel carries live coverage of the entire speech of Boris Johnson - a backbencher - and then returns to normal programming at the exact moment he sits down and the leader of the third largest party gets up to speak.
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Two minutes in, and Johnson has already mentioned Sturgeon by name and attacked an SNP policy. How the hell can ITV justify locking Nicola Sturgeon out of the room on Johnson's demand, allowing him to attack her unchallenged? This is quite literally outrageous. #LeadersDebate
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"Northern Ireland does not want to be part of the customs union" says Arlene Foster, which makes it a tad mysterious that Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU.
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UKIP will appear on the St Andrew's Day edition of #bbcqt, the SNP won't (again). Just a reminder that the SNP have 35 seats, UKIP have zero, and UKIP received fewer votes *across the whole UK* than the SNP did.
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The public mood is being fundamentally misread by @Jackson_Carlaw. People who think Nicola Sturgeon may have to diverge from the Westminster line are not Nats who want Scottish difference for the sake of it. They're people who are rightly worried about their loved ones' safety.
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If Rebecca Long-Bailey were to cite Venezuela as an example to follow, the London media would crucify her. But Lisa Nandy announces she wants to replicate Spain's extremism in Catalonia, and the media react as if she's said something natural and uncontroversial.
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This is UNBELIEVABLE. ITV have selected a question about "the Union" in a debate from which they've banned the SNP. They're ENCOURAGING Johnson to attack the SNP unchallenged. They're not only shafting Scotland, they're trolling Scotland. #LeadersDebate
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That was fascinating. The Prime Minister was asked the simplest and most un-tricksy of questions by Ian Blackford - does she still regard the four nations of the UK as "equal partners", as she did in 2012? She looked perturbed and very deliberately avoided saying "yes". #PMQs
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I see BBC News are obsessively pushing the line that the SNP need a single-party overall majority to claim a mandate. Someone explain to them how parliamentary democracy and proportional representation work. #sp21
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Is it true that Ian Blackford basically said good riddance to Kenny MacAskill and called him an embarrassment? For pity's sake, we're talking about the man who was the Scottish Government's Justice Secretary for seven years. The SNP leadership need to dispense with the hysteria.
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I really am deeply concerned by Boris Johnson's apparent comment about taking coronavirus "on the chin" and "allowing it to move through the population". These are people's lives we're talking about and it's not for him to decide they're expendable.
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The problem unionists have with Scotland being voted "most beautiful country in the world" is the implication that Scotland is a country.
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Glenn, when you have a spare minute, could you ask her why Scotland is the only country in the world where it's the defeated Leader of the Opposition who gets to announce what the elected leader of the government will be 'allowed' to do? Thanks in advance.
โIf she wins a majority outright then she can negotiate with the UK governmentโ on #indyref2
Scottish conservative leader @RuthDavidsonMSP sets high bar for @NicolaSturgeon to hold another referendum
SNP say they already have mandate from winning 2016 Holyrood election
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Douglas Ross: "The SNP do not speak for Scotland."
Why does Scotland keep electing the SNP, then?
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It's absolutely obvious that an edict has gone out from the very top of the BBC to play down the catastrophic daily UK death toll. This has happened several days in a row now, and is unlikely to be a coincidence.
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Gordon Brown was actually Prime Minister for three years, with a big Commons majority. Is it tactless of me to point out he had plenty of time to do sonething about devoluton if it was remotely a priority for him?
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Dear God. Dennis Skinner rebelling against the Corbyn leadership by voting with the Tories. The world's gone mad.
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Tony Blair gave us the Iraq War. David Cameron gave us Brexit. Nicola Sturgeon gave us baby boxes, and is "the most divisive politician since Thatcher", according to Richard Leonard.
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Express headline yesterday: "Nicola Sturgeon HUMILIATED by Boris Johnson" about something or other. Pro tip, guys: you might want to wait at least a few days before trying to convince us that the party that won 48 seats has been "humiliated" by the party that won 6.
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Isn't it a bit odd for Nicola Sturgeon to passive-aggressively "note" that Ash Regan hadn't raised any prior concerns, when in fact she raised those concerns in an open letter a couple of years ago?
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When the SNP first became the third largest party in the UK Parliament, the BBC weren't quite sure how to handle it. But they've now settled upon an ingenious solution - they're pretending it never happened.
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Do we know what time Laura Kuenssberg is leaking the exit poll? #GeneralElection19
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BBC: "Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has said Ms Sturgeon "refuses to accept the result" of the EU referendum "because she lost it"."
Where in that sentence is the acknowledgement that both Ms Sturgeon and Ms Davidson campaigned for Remain, and that Remain won in Scotland?
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Interesting that Douglas Ross thinks it's the death of Prince Philip that has made us consider what's really important, as opposed to, say, a year-long pandemic.
#stvdebate
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Only the Tories could take the Scottish Government to court to try to take powers over Scottish agriculture back to Westminster, and then in the meantime accuse the SNP of leaving farmers in the dark about what Scottish agricultural policy will be.
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I was under the impression that one of the purposes of the BBC Scotland channel was to carry special events like Nicola Sturgeon's landmark statement. But instead it was apparently vital to simulcast a snooker match with BBC2.
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Support for independence stands at 54% in the latest poll, but an Express headline this morning screams: "Nicola Sturgeon's dream in tatters as Scottish independence dubbed 'catastrophe'"
The reason?
Er, some random English Tory MP says it's a bad idea.
"Tatters".
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Even the BBC admit it, albeit through gritted teeth: "So Ms Sturgeon is correct to say that pushing through the EU Withdrawal Bill without the consent of the Scottish Parliament means that the long-standing convention has, in effect, been 'ripped up'."
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Nick Robinson warns people that they'll end up with a "British Fox News" if they don't stop criticising the BBC. God, what a ghastly thought. We could have Andrew Neil as an editorialising right-wing "presenter", and Sarah Sands as editor of the Today programme. No thanks.
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"Andrew Neil's GB News, which promises a 'boldly different 24-hour television and digital news service', is expected to shun impartiality"
Neil's transition from the BBC could be pretty seamless, then.
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I suspect Sarah Smith's outrageous claim that Nicola Sturgeon has been "enjoying" this crisis will become as notorious as Nick Robinson's "he didn't answer".
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Hilarious BBC headline: "EU calls Gibraltar a British colony." What the hell else is it? Is it an integral part of the UK? Nope. Is it a sovereign entity that is freely associated with Britain? Nope. Of course it's a colony.
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I think Germany has more or less exhausted the credibility of the "we get to adjudicate on what is a genocide because we committed the worst one ourselves" line.
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I'd also like to know what "believing passionately in Scotland being at the heart of the United Kingdom" actually means, because we're certainly not at the heart of it at the moment. We're treated as fringe irritants, not active decision-makers.
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If the BBC is not, as it insists, biased against Scottish independence, there are two questions its interviewers need to ask the likes of Boris Johnson whenever the 'once in a generation' point is raised.
1. "Is Scotland in a voluntary union?"
2. "If so, how can it leave?"
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#DissolveTheUnion is now trending UK-wide. As this was an objective of the Russian government, and as David Leask was ultimately responsible for making it happen, the only logical conclusion is that David Leask is a Putin agent. If he denies it, that will be further proof.
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I presume based on this tweet that if Nicola Sturgeon turns up uninvited to the rigged BBC debate between Johnson and Corbyn and demands to take part, the Tory response will be "come on in, Nicola, you're more than welcome"? No, thought not.
Tonight I went to Channel 4 to talk about climate change but Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon refused to debate a Conservative #climatedebate
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It would be ironic if Scottish independence becomes known in the international media as "the Highland Spring".
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Effie Deans: "Gaelic is derived from Middle Irish and was imported to Scotland, so it is in fact neither Scottish nor indigenous."
By that logic English isn't English, because it's derived from Old English, which was imported from Germany and Denmark.
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According to the mainstream media, the history of the SNP since 2007 has been one of neverending disaster and setback, with just the very occasional and minor bright spot such as winning every single election and being in government for the whole time.
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I can't understand what the Porton Down guy has got to do to get on BBC News. Maybe fling fish from a trawler, or cheat at cricket?
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It's very easy to mock Jackson Carlaw, but in all seriousness I think the Tories have made a terrible mistake today. At least Davidson managed to blend the militant stuff with a bit of charm. Carlaw just comes across as an angry, bitter, arrogant and entitled man.
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This is an actual quote from Ruth Davidson's FT piece: "If leaving the EU is a bad thing, as the SNP insist". What? WHAT? As "the SNP" insist? Are we now being invited to accept that Ruth Davidson's high-profile role in the Remain campaign was a collective hallucination?
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I haven't always been a fan of Ross Greer, but I've just seen the clip from Good Morning Britain, and by God he did well in the face of appalling behaviour from both Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid. You'd expect that sort of thing from Morgan, but I'm very disappointed in Reid.
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If the Scottish Tory manifesto is "No to Indyref 2" and the SNP manifesto is "Yes to Indyref 2", and if the SNP win a majority of Scottish seats and the Tories don't, surely that means the Scottish people have said Yes to Indyref 2? You know, as opposed to No? Just a thought.
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Let's hope Ruth Davidson finds time during her book signings to urge Nicola Sturgeon to get back to the day job.
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As I understand it, the Scotland-England border is now (theoretically) semi-closed, with legally enforceable penalties for crossing without a good enough reason. This was supposed to be the Armageddon scenario for Our Precious Union, but everyone seems to be coping so far.
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On the Naga Munchetty incident: I know the BBC would argue that interviewers play devil's advocate, and that all politicians are challenged in the same way. But have you ever heard a BBC interviewer say to a London politician "you'd be broke without Scotland's resources"?
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"How a nation of 5.2 million topped the world" says the BBC about Norway finishing first in the Olympic medal table. Population of Scotland: 5.4 million. But according to the likes of Craig Reedie, we're so small that the idea of a Scottish Olympic team is ludicrous.
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I'm not sure why we're supposed to give a monkey's whether Robert the Bruce was born in Essex. He was the King of Scotland and led the national liberation. If by any chance he did it in an Essex accent, fine, good for him.
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"Skye" is now trending in the UK. Nicholas Soames doing wonders for the Scottish tourism industry.
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Imagine if the Question Time panel was comprised of John Swinney, Patrick Harvie, Henry McLeish, Lesley Riddoch and just one token rabid Tory. Would never, ever happen that way round, but that's the kind of extreme imbalance we're talking about tonight. #bbcqt
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The biggest test of Nicola Sturgeon's career: she must insist that Scotland's lockdown remains in force until it can be safely replaced with a credible 'test, trace, isolate' plan to suppress the epidemic, even if that means facing down the Tory 'hawks' - scotgoespop.blogspot.com/202โฆ
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A small tip for the BBC: you won't have demonstrated that you've come to terms with devolution (after 21 years!) until you manage to report on the Scottish Government making its own decisions without using words like "discrepancy" and "sowing confusion".
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BREAKING: The Sun quite simply LIED about their new independence poll. It does NOT show Yes on 42%. It does NOT show a 7% drop in Yes support. It does NOT suggest support for independence has "plummeted" after the Queen's death. See the real numbers here:
scotgoespop.blogspot.com/202โฆ
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STV have really outdone themselves this time. A live England *charity* match while Scotland are playing.
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Residents of the former East Germany will be particularly bemused by Andrew Neil's claim that Germany is currently experiencing its most serious political crisis since the 1940s.
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It's becoming clear that Andrew Neil hasn't listened to anything but the sound of his own voice in this interview. He's just claimed that Nicola Sturgeon said something that was the complete opposite of what everybody heard her say.
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As I've always said, the 'Anyone But England' phenomenon has got nothing to do with anti-Englishness, it's because we essentially have a foreign media. If Swedish TV was beamed into our homes, talking to us as if we're all proud Swedes, people would start wanting Sweden to lose.
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Bye bye, Tom Tugendhat. You can try again in a generation. It's a generational thing, Tom.
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It's got to the point where Spain has done enough to justify its expulsion from the EU. That's not hyperbole. It's to the eternal shame of the EU that they still can't even bring themselves to criticise Spain's actions, let alone start an expulsion process.
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There's a bit of a Devi Sridhar fan club throughout the UK as a result of her fearless commentary since the outset of this crisis. The scales will have well and truly fallen from those people's eyes about Ruth Davidson today.
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EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: Just 20% of people in Scotland, and only 29% of SNP voters, support gender self-ID -
scotgoespop.blogspot.com/202โฆ
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The Speaker John Bercow abandoned all pretence at neutrality today by sneerily observing that Clive Lewis' baby had been "better behaved" than SNP MPs. Let me gently point out that Clive Lewis' baby appears also to have a better understanding of Commons rules than Mr Bercow.
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The excuse for the huge England flag in Downing Street will be "we'd do the same for any Home Nation", but that's simply untrue, isn't it? Wales reached the SEMI-FINALS five years ago and nothing like this happened.
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Bloody hell, the BBC website is actually covering the Ipsos-Mori poll. So the answer to the question, how many Yes-majority polls does it take to get the BBC to report the story, is "about ten in a row".
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Just 3 or 4 fewer Tory seats at last year's election would have swung the balance and averted an extreme Brexit. The Scottish Labour and Scottish Lib Dem strategists who thought it was a brilliant idea to give the Tories a clear run in certain seats have got a lot to answer for.
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Boris Johnson using the platform the BBC have given him to attack Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP in his opening statement. Doubtless the BBC will now be ensuring fairness by clearing their schedules after the debate to give Ms Sturgeon a right of reply. Or perhaps not. #BBCDebate
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Stuart Campbell's earnest belief that he can get rid of the wildly popular Nicola Sturgeon in the next four months is bordering on comical.
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Strong contender for Murdo's stupidest tweet to date. The Tories won their UK-wide majority on 44% of the vote. You don't even have to set traps for them.
Welcome to Scotland.
The only country* in the world where 45% = a majority.
(*except North Korea) scotsman.com/news/politics/nโฆ
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Memo to Douglas Ross: it wasn't you who stopped an SNP overall majority, it was VICTOR D'HONDT.
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It's good to see unionist politicians (ie. Labour and Lib Dems) speaking out against Home Office raids, but surely the penny has to drop that the only way to stop this happening is for Scotland to become an independent country?
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Scottish Tories: "Send Nicola Sturgeon a message on the 23rd of May, and tell her NO MORE REFERENDUMS!!!!"
May 23rd: SNP win election by a landslide.
Scottish Tories: "You don't speak for Scotland, Nicola! Why won't she LISTEN????"
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Perhaps Nicola Sturgeon should refuse to meet David Mundell, and pass him on to a junior minister instead?
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If the mention of Scotland's elected leader is enough to provoke a loud boo from an English audience, this "precious union" has no future.
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My favourite bit of tonight's BBC Union Jack fest was when the lovely 90-something Scottish lady excitedly said "look, they've got the flag up!" and it turned out to be an enormous saltire. You could almost hear the cries of frustration from Broadcasting House.
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For a second night in a row, the BBC News special breaks off coverage at the exact moment Ian Blackford stands up to speak. It's absolutely uncanny.
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Douglas Ross saying he wouldn't have believed when he was a child that he'd be standing for First Minister. Let's not get carried away, Douglas, you're *standing* for First Minister, but that's about as far as it's ever going to go.
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So let me get this straight - the BBC Scotland channel breaks into its simulcast snooker coverage to go to Holyrood, but only *after* the statement has already finished? It wasn't carried live on BBC1, BBC2, the BBC Scotland channel, the BBC News channel or BBC Parliament.
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Toby Young wants a binary-choice referendum in Scotland - either a) abolish devolution and revert to direct London rule, or b) become an independent country. What a brilliant idea for making independence inevitable, and how can we make this man Prime Minister?
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I might set up a GERS party to stand in English constituencies and preach the gospel that "half the UK's deficit could be wiped out" by making Scotland independent. The people of England must be freed from their leaders' selflessness in hanging on to this appalling millstone.
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This is the understatement of the century. Appointing an English MP to the Scotland Office is unprecedented in modern times. When there are 12 Scottish MPs and umpteen Scottish peers to choose from, this appears to be an intentional act of colonialism.
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The Scottish Tories had a choice in this crisis. They could have been part of 'Team Scotland'. Instead they've decided to be pro-virus, and I'm not sure they'll ever be forgiven.
Itโs absolute nonsense that @BBCScotlandNews are still broadcasting live every day a 30 minute Party Political Broadcast by the SNP, with no opportunity for a response by any other Party or contrary views expressed. This has to end.
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The BBC News Channel breaks off coverage of the Commons early in an Ian Blackford speech. THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED. (Actually it is unprecedented, because they normally break off coverage before he gets one word out.)
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One thing I hope we can all agree on: the views of the 1922 Committe should play absolutely no part in determining whether the lockdown is lifted in Scotland.
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Just catching up with yesterday's Scotsman article entitled "SNP heavyweights: There is no appetite for a second independence referendum". It turns out that two of the three "SNP heavyweights" cited are Jim Sillars and Alex Bell. I'm trying to keep a straight face, guys, honest.
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Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll on independence: Yes vote surges to 52% - the highest figure for three-and-a-half years. And pro-indy parties are on course to take 57% of the seats at Holyrood 2021:
scotgoespop.blogspot.com/202โฆ
#indyref2
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This is the boast of an occupying army. "We're in charge, whether you like it or not, regardless of how many times you vote against us, and we're going to run your lives just exactly as we please."
'Our vision is for a country united and prosperous, sharing in the advantages and creative dynamism provided by our being one, United Kingdom.
And this Internal Market Bill, is just the start. The UK Govt is back in Scotland. Get used to it.'
scotsman.com/news/politics/wโฆ
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I see SNP MPs have gone from implicitly attacking Joanna Cherry to quite openly attacking her. I just don't get it. She hasn't done anything wrong.
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I'm not a great Tory-watcher, so just out of curiosity: does anyone know if Ruth Davidson has demanded that her very own Ross Thomson MP should get behind the 'sensible Chequers deal' in the same way she has demanded that of the SNP?
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When I saw The Times call for the Holyrood election to be postponed, I thought "a few weeks delay might be unavoidable and even desirable". But now I've seen Blair McDougall jump on it and call for a postponement of ONE YEAR, that looks more like an agenda.
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Ruth Davidson is absolutely right. The SNP grievance-mongers must stop their doomed attempts to undermine this strong and stable Tory government and its rock-solid masterplan for Brexit.
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Ruth Davidson had better hope she's wrong about Indyref 2 being "dead", because she's got nothing else to fight elections on. Nothing.
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